There is a quiet pandemic happening in America. It is the growing, quantified, prevalence of the chronic sleeping disorder Sleep Apnea. The National Healthy Sleep Awareness Project has announced that more than 22 million Americans, are afflicted with this sleep disorder. These numbers are growing exponentially, and it affects people of every age, from children, to adults, ages 30-70.
Sleeping is Serious: Temporary Stoppage of Breathing Can Occur
Sleep Apnea is covert. Left untreated, it negatively, and seriously impacts the quality of your health. You may not realize that you have this invasive chronic problem. Obstructive sleep apnea, the most common type of this disorder, occurs as the throat muscles relax, during sleep. Airways become blocked with soft tissue, episodically, and the ability to breathe is temporarily occluded. Abrupt awakenings stimulate the resumption of breathing, causing a lack of deep sleep, dry mouth, headaches, and feelings of exhaustion. Snoring is just one symptom of this illness. Not everyone exhibits snoring, or fully wakes up during multiple night episodes. Yet the effects on the body are serious, and overwhelming fatigue, from a lack of deep sleep, is prevalent throughout your daily life.
Debilitating Bodily System Impairment from Sleep Apnea
When airway blockage occurs, repeatedly, the oxygen levels in the blood (hypoxia), fall quickly, elevating blood pressure, stressing the heart muscles. The consequences of this on-going oxygen deprivation adversely affect your body’s numerous organ systems, with long term complications.
Consider These Examples:
- The Respiratory System – Breathing transports oxygen into the lungs. Sleep apnea interrupts breathing, allowing fluid to enter the lungs, causing pneumonia and lung scarring. The ongoing repetition of oxygen deprivation in the lungs can lead to COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which seriously cuts short an active lifestyle.
- Digestive System – Apnea promotes the storage of too much fat in the liver, a high content of liver enzyme builds up, and liver scarring. It contributes to worsening acid reflux, which is painful, and erosive to the esophagus.
- Circulatory – Cardiovascular System – With sleep apnea, your levels of LDL, (bad) cholesterol, are much higher, causing heart disease. The heart muscle is also overworked, due to fluctuating oxygen levels. This strain perpetuates:
- Palpitations
- Higher levels of blood pressure
- Numerous incidences of strokes
- Heart attacks, and abnormal heart rhythms
- Coronary artery disease
- Endocrine System – As the body makes insulin, sleep apnea impedes the balance, and use, of this hormone, creating bodily insulin resistance, and a vulnerability for contracting Type 2 Diabetes.
Additional Physical and Emotional Apnea Vulnerabilities
Sleep apnea is all encompassing, in its effects on the human anatomy. Visually, a lack of adequate sleep creates a higher incidence, and vulnerability, for eye diseases such as glaucoma, due to the short duration of eyelid cover that sleep provides. An overstimulated bladder, from hormone imbalances, keeps you up often, at night, adding to severe sleep deprivation. Memory issues, frequent headaches, and the inability to concentrate, focus, and sustain a good mood, are all rooted in problems which stem from sleep apnea.
CPAP Therapy – Doctor Recommended Guidance
Your primary care doctor will thoroughly examine your current medical condition, and symptoms. The plethora of ongoing research in sleep disorder illnesses, is now showcasing the therapies which work, with great success, to alleviate the suffering which sleep apnea creates.
You may require a sleep study, to diagnose you specific breathing attributes. A Polysomnography is designed study brain waves, sleep patterns, and more, while you sleep. The results offer the best methodology for treatment, and lifestyle changes, that will reduce, and often alleviate health risks, and breathing challenges.
Of the current tools for greater well-being, with sleep apnea, your doctor will prescribe the best CPAP machine available. CPAP stands for “continuous positive airway pressure.” This devise is thought of as the gold standard of breathing apparatuses. It raises the air pressure in your obstructed throat, incrementally, to a level which continuously keeps airways open. This process, designed for you, affords a feeling of natural breathing, that sustains deep sleep, and oxygenates properly, the bodily systems which are life and health sustaining. Good, sound sleep is achieved, and energy, is restored. If you are wondering, does medicare cover cpap machines, the answer is yes, but there can be specific coverage rules to be aware of. Medicare can only cover the CPAP machine as durable medical equipment after you have been diagnosed with sleep apnea and a doctor has prescribed it for home use.
What CPAP Achieves – for Bodily Systems
CPAP, used for 4 to 6 hours or more, reduces the bodies level of blood pressure to a healthy range, for patients with sleep apnea, and even those with hypertension. This magnificent apparatus has been tested to reduce cardiovascular risks and hospitalizations by 50%. Proper air flow, through the respiratory system, keeps fats from storing in the liver, and fluid from accumulating within the lungs. Working with your doctor to:
- Creating strategies for increasing exercise
- Restricting food consumption to a well-balanced diet
- Omitting smoking
- Taking time to destress
Having regular checkups, to assure that the air pressure is correctly administered, as you achieve a higher state of wellness, will allow you to reach the state of well-being that sleep affords. You have the power, with medical expertise, your willingness to make lifestyle changes, and the CPAP tools, to insure a happy and productive life.
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